FINDLAY- A Jackson Township man who shot and killed a Findlay police dog after it came onto his property insists he didn't know the dog worked for police, but a Hancock County grand jury apparently saw things differently. Steven E. Vanderhoff, 41, was indicted this week for assaulting a police dog and cruelty to animals. The assault charge, a third-degree felony, alleges that while Flip was not assisting police at the time he was killed Nov. 18, the shooter had actual knowledge that Flip was a police dog. "He didn't. His girlfriend can tell you that he didn't know who the dog was," said Jeff Whitman, attorney for Mr. Vanderhoff. Mr. Whitman said Mr. Vanderhoff, his girlfriend, and their young son live in the country, about a quarter-mile from Findlay Police Officer Bryon Deeter, Flip's handler who kept the dog at his home. He said Mr. Vanderhoff rarely drove in the direction of the Deeters' house and had never seen the dog before the day he came home with his son and saw Flip come up to the car. Mr. Vanderhoff told Hancock County sheriff's deputies the dog would not get away and kept sticking its nose in the door when he would try to open it. He said he eventually was able to get inside the house, where he retrieved a gun, came back outside, and fired once at Flip when the dog failed to obey commands to get away. "Anyone has the right to protect themselves on their own property," Mr. Whitman said. While investigators said Mr. Vanderhoff never described Flip as "aggressive," his attorney insisted he used similar words. "He used words like threatening, attacking, menacing," Mr. Whitman said. "… The dog was charging him. When he fired the shot, reports show [the dog] was shot in the front chest. It was not like he was shot in the hip or shot running away from him. The dog was only 15 feet from him." Mr. Whitman said Mr. Vanderhoff feared for his son's safety. The youngster was still in his car seat and "he didn't think he could get his son and get into the garage without the dog coming at him." No charges have been filed against Officer Deeter for failing to confine the dog, and Findlay Police Chief Bill Spraw said yesterday that Officer Deeter had not been disciplined for violating any departmental policy. "I think there's other factors involved in this… I don't know that Bryon was completely culpable," the chief said. The officer's son had let Flip out of the house, then failed to let him back in before the family left to go to a relative's house. Mr. Whitman said he understands the police department's loss but said his client has suffered as well "My personal opinion is there's been too much made out of this thing," he said. "I don't think the officer should be charged. It was an unfortunate series of events. I don't know why anyone needs to be punished any more than they have been over this." Mr. Vanderhoff, who is to be arraigned Wednesday in Hancock County Common Pleas Court, faces up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine if convicted of the assault charge. Cruelty to animals, a second-degree misdemeanor, carries a maximum sentence of 90 days. City law director Dave Hackenberg said shortly after Flip was killed, he sent a bill to Mr. Whitman for more than $11,000 that the city paid for the dog. He said that under Ohio law, a person who shoots and kills a dog is responsible to pay for it. "It's the statute," Mr. Hackenberg said. "I'm not saying, 'You shot our dog. You owe us.' The statute says if you shoot a dog you have to pay the value, pure and simple. We paid $11,000-plus for that dog trained. If we wanted to be real stinky about it, he's worth more than that now." After Flip was killed, Findlay native and Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger announced that he would buy a new police dog for his hometown. Chief Spraw said Officer Deeter has been working with a loaner dog named Spike, also a Belgian Malinois, and Spike seems to be working out.

MOSCOW, Feb. 8 — The two opponents padded and paced on a snowcovered basketball court, waiting for their fight to begin.

Viktor Korotayev for The New York Times

A dogfighting tourney was held at a sanitarium in the Tula region.

They were adult Central Asian wolf dogs in the middleweight class. (Crafty: In the picture, both dogs look like Akitas) Both were undefeated in a combined 42 appearances in Russia’s fighting-dog rings. Each weighed more than 100 pounds.

The referee gave the sign. Their trainers released them. The dogs growled, lunged and met, locking jaws on each other’s faces. They began pulling and twisting, each trying to force the other to the snow.

About 150 people lined the fences to watch. The most intense matchup of the fourth stage of the all-Russian dogfighting championship, held in a forest region well south of Moscow, had begun.

Dogfighting is prohibited in much of the West, and animal rights advocates have long wished to have it banned in Russia and the rest of the former Soviet world, labeling it a cruel and a bloody diversion for gamblers and thugs. They have succeeded in Moscow, where the fights are forbidden by mayoral decree.

But throughout Central Asia and the Caucasus, and extending to the outskirts of Russia’s capital, a form of the sport has thrived, cementing local legitimacy and gaining new followers since the Soviet Union’s collapse 15 years ago. It has also returned to Afghanistan, where it was forbidden during the Taliban’s rule.

The sport involves massive, thick-headed breeds, including Central Asian shepherd dogs and Caucasian ovcharka, bred by livestock herders across the continent to defend sheep and cattle in the mountains and on the steppe. Collectively the dogs are called volkodavs, the wolf-killers.

The All-Russian Association of Russian Volkodavs, which sponsors a national fighting championship and participates in fights in other nations, claims to have more than 1,000 breeders among its members and another 1,000 owners who enter dogs in fights.

It holds tournaments almost openly, and has enough fans to support a glossy magazine, a Web site and an annual championship tournament.

Its members brush aside criticism as ill-informed and superficial, saying the sport has roots in traditional contests in which shepherds tested their work dogs and celebrated their stamina and wolf-fighting skills. The also insist that their tournaments, unlike secretive fights with pit bulls and other fighting breeds, never involve contests to the death, and that the dogs are rarely injured seriously.

“Only people who have not seen it, and do not understand it, dislike this,” said Stanislav Mikhailov, the association’s president, as owners gathered recently for the latest tourney, held in a sanitarium in the Tula region, in the forest south of Moscow.

This event was at once open and partly closed. The fans streamed in. But one Western and three Russian journalists were admitted on condition that the sanitarium’s location not be disclosed, out of fear of vandalism or protests by opponents of the fights. In the Caucasus and in Asia, dog owners said, such precautions are not necessary.

In the ring the fight continued. The dogs tugged each other in tight circles by their snouts and then broke free, snarled and attacked again. Sometimes they rose up, pressing for leverage with forepaws while driving forward on hind legs and seeking a purchase for their bared teeth.

Their handlers crouched beside them, shouting encouragement.

One dog, a reddish-tan shepherd’s dog called Sarbai, took an early advantage. He weighed about 135 pounds, at least 30 pounds more than his foe. “Good boy, Sarbai!” his handler shouted. “Bite him well! Work!”

Sarbai wagged the stump of his clipped tail.

His opponent, Jack, had a slightly crooked left rear leg, which his owner said had been broken when he was hit by a car five years ago. He could not match Sarbai’s strength. But he was quick. He refused to submit. As he yielded ground, he clamped onto Sarbai several times, sometimes biting the larger dog’s neck, sometimes lunging for his legs.

While most of the day’s more than 10 matches drew little blood, this one was different. Jack and Sarbai tore each other’s mouths with the first bites. Blood flowed, staining the dogs’ faces and flanks.

They fought for about 15 minutes as a light snow fell. Eventually the pace slowed until the dogs, exhausted, at last stood almost motionless, tongues out. The referee signaled for rest. The first round was a draw.

The legality of such spectacles is unclear. Russia’s criminal code includes a statute forbidding cruelty to animals, but to date, animal rights advocates and dog breeders agree, it has not been used against volkodav fights. ============

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The statute’s language is vague, and Elena Maruyeva, director of the Vita Center for Animal Rights Protection, a private organization in Moscow, said the government did not interpret it broadly. “In practice it is very, very hard to prosecute a person under this law,” she said.

Sarbai, with his trainer, Aleksandr Fedyakin, is a 135-pound shepherd’s dog that took part in the recent tournament in a forest area south of Moscow.

Between rounds of the fight between Sarbai and Jack, another dog, Khattab, above, extended his undefeated record. The dog owners say that because the fights are not forbidden, they are allowed. They note that government officials know about the tourneys, and the association publicizes the results. Fans also sell plainly labeled videos of the fights.

“We are a semi-open organization,” said Yuri Yevgrashin, the chief referee for the day’s events.

Whatever its official status, the sport appears to be under no significant threat. Ms. Maruyeva and an official at another of the principal animal protection organizations in Moscow said that so far, they had not pushed for bans on wolf dog fighting. Instead, they hope for other measures, like restrictions on the breeding of attack dogs, registration of wolf dog breeders and enacting standards for their care.

On the court, the second round began. The dogs locked jaws and began tumbling against snow banks. Jack still would not quit. The momentum seemed to turn. Could the smaller dog win?

“I am with you, Jack!” a red-faced man screamed, holding a plastic up of vodka. But the second round ended like the first — with two exhausted dogs.

Under the association’s rules, dogs are sorted into two classes for age and weight. They are juniors until age two and a half, when they are classified as adults. Middleweights must weigh less than 62 kilos, about 136 pounds. Any dog larger is a heavyweight.

Each fight lasts until one dog shows fear or pain — by dropping its tail, squeaking, whimpering, refusing to fight or snapping its jaws defensively, all grounds for instant disqualification. There is no scoring. There are only winners and losers or, in fights that continue for three rounds without an animal yielding, draws.

Sometimes the outcome is clear within a minute. Other times, fights last more than 45 minutes. A veterinarian is always on hand, Mr. Mikhailov and Mr. Yevgrashin said.

Between Sarbai and Jack’s rounds, other dogs fought. One was called Koba, the nickname used by Stalin. He won.

Another was named Khattab, after a Jordanian-born terrorist who fought in Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Chechnya before Russia’s intelligence service killed him with a poison-soaked letter in 2002. He won, too, in the junior middleweight class, extending his undefeated record to eight wins.

Many dogfights in Russia are said to be tainted, with steroid-swelled dogs, or animals smeared with wolf fat to confuse or intimidate their foes, or dogs’ mouths injected with Novocain to make them fight without hesitation. But Edgar Grigorian, Khattab’s owner, said that at this level the matches were clean.

“We are adamantly against cheating,” he said. “I can always tell a dirty dog in a fight, and a good judge will always see it.”

Mr. Grigorian and several other breeders and association members said that there was no prize money, but that successful fighters were used to sire puppies, which could sell for more than $500 each.

In two days at the sanitarium, no admission fee was charged and no gambling was visible, although the breeders said there might be some private side bets.

The previous night, owners and fans had gathered in the sanitarium to celebrate their sport. Behind a hotel room door, a huge dog guarded a metal bowl of meat. When Mr. Yevgrashin opened the door, the dog stared at a stranger and growled.

Mr. Yevgrashin closed the door. Shamil Dotdayev, who sells videotapes of fights and copies of his book, “Caucasian Volkodavs,” reflected on the tournament ahead.

The fights, he said, help preserve breeds with ancient roots in Central Asian and Caucasus life and with a continuing utility in food production. The dogs that succeed, he said, are an essential part of this hard, canine lot — the pack leaders.

Animal rights groups disagree. They say the breeding system rewards the attributes needed for fighting, which are narrower than those for guarding a livestock herd or leading a pack.

Mr. Dotdayev admitted that his interests were broader. He poured shots of vodka and said that dogfighting had an almost irresistible draw, and that studying fighting dogs can become a shepherd’s or mountain man’s obsession.

“The dogs teach us,” he said. “You cannot look at a dog and tell who it is. The dog is on the inside, not on the outside. It is in his spirit.”

“It is the same with people,” he added, and lifted his glass.

On the basketball court, Jack and Sarbai were led back for a third round.

Sarbai quickly pulled Jack to the snow. Each time Jack escaped he was pinned anew, until he was spent and began to snap his jaws, signaling defeat. His tournament was over. Sarbai advanced to the next round.

Being a veterinarian, I had been called to examine a ten-year old Irish Wolfhound named Belker. The dog's owners, Ron, his wife, Lisa, and their little boy, Shane, were all very attached to Belker and they were hoping for a miracle.

I examined Belker and found he was dying of cancer. I told the family we couldn't do anything for Belker, and offered to perform the euthanasia procedure for the old dog in their home.

As we made arrangements, Ron and Lisa told me they thought it would be good for the four-year old Shane to observe the procedure. They felt as though Shane might learn something from the experience.

The next day, I felt the familiar catch in my throat as Belker's family surrounded him. Shane seemed so calm, petting the old dog for the last time, that I wond ered if he understood what was going on. Within a few minutes, Belker slipped peacefully away. The little boy seemed to accept Belker's transition without any difficulty or confusion We sat together for a while after Belker's death, wondering aloud about the sad fact that animal lives are shorter than human lives.

Shane, who had been listening quietly, piped up, "I know why."

Startled, we all turned to him. What came out of his mouth next stunned me. I'd never heard a more comforting explanation.

He said, "People are born so that they can learn how to live a good life - - like loving everybody all the time and being nice, right?" The four-year-old continued, "Well, dogs already know how to do that, so they don't have to stay as long."

It's about a plucky little Jack Russell terrier named George, who stood like a giant against two marauding pit bulls and gave his own life to save five kids from the steel-trap jaws and razor-sharp teeth of the vicious attack machines.

Local officials say it's also a story about the people who trained the pit bulls to kill and who may have fed the animals methamphetamines to make them even more deadly.

The tragedy unfolded Sunday afternoon on New Zealand's North Island, in the town of Manaia, where a group of children — and George — were walking back from a trip to the candy store.

Out of nowhere, the children told police, the two pit bulls lunged at them.

One of the kids, Richard Rosewarne, 11, told the local paper that George never backed down against the pit bulls, doggedly refusing to let the them get at his little brother, 4-year-old Darryl.

"George tried to protect us by barking and rushing at them, but they started to bite him — one on the head and the other on the back," Rosewarne said. "We ran off crying and some people saw what was happening and rescued George."

It was too late, however, to save the little 9-year-old terrier. Steven Hopkinson, the veterinarian who treated George, said the dog's wounds were the worst he'd seen. Putting him down, Hopkinson said, was the only option.

For Allan Gay, George's owner, the loss is especially devastating. He lives alone and George had been his faithful companion for seven of his nine years, inheriting the pup when neighbors moved away.

"These two pitbulls rushed up and were going for the little boy," Gay said, choking back tears. "George went for them, it's what he would do. He didn't stand a chance, but I reckon he saved that boy from being chewed up.

"If it wasn't for George, those kids would have copped it," Gay said.

Gay said he had been receiving phone calls non-stop from relatives and news media since word got out about George's heroics.

"The phone has been going since about half past seven this morning. Every time I hang up it rings again. It's worn out; I might have to get a new one," he said.

The pit bulls, meanwhile, were found Tuesday and turned over to local officials, who said they would be destroyed.

Officials also are investigating reports that the dogs could have been given methamphetamines to make them more aggressive and very unpredictable.

"I understand it commonly happens in Rotorua," animal control officer Kiernan Best said.

"The pitbulls I've had dealings with are naturally aggressive because of the type of people they are with," Best said. "They keep pitbulls around because they don't like visitors, and one can only presume they have something to hide, that they are into crime and drugs.

"They are paranoid about officials visiting and the dog emulates the owner," Best said.

Gay, meanwhile, and the kids George saved built a makeshift memorial to their hero.

"George was brave," Gay said, as each of the kids held a photo of the little pup they'll never forget. "He took them on and he's not even a foot high. ... He jumped in on them, he tried to keep them off."

And, he gave his life doing so.

The Associate Press and Taranaki Daily News contributed to this report.

Logged

"You see, it's not the blood you spill that gets you what you want, it's the blood you share. Your family, your friendships, your community, these are the most valuable things a man can have." Before Dishonor - Hatebreed

Black Commonwealth's Attorney, who blocked execution of search warrant obtained by Sheriff's Office, playing the race card because his effort to protect Michael Vick got bitch slapped by the Feds.

Feds use warrant, search Vick's property

Associated Press Posted: 11 hours ago SURRY, Va. (AP) - Federal law enforcement officials descended on a home owned by Michael Vick on Thursday armed with a search warrant that suggests they're taking over an investigation into the Falcons quarterback's possible involvement in dogfighting.

More than a dozen vehicles went to the home early in the afternoon and investigators searched inside before turning their attention to the area where officials found dozens of dogs in late April and evidence that suggested the home was involved in a dogfighting operation.

Surry County officials had secured a search warrant in late May based on an informant's information to look for as many as 30 dog carcasses buried on the property. The warrant never was executed because Commonwealth's Attorney Gerald G. Poindexter said he had issues with the way it was worded.

That search warrant expired Thursday.

"What is foreign to me is the federal government getting into a dogfighting case," Poindexter said. "I know it's been done, but what's driving this? Is it this boy's celebrity? Would they have done this if it wasn't Michael Vick?"

Poindexter said he was "absolutely floored" that federal officials got involved, and that he believes he and Sheriff Harold D. Brown handled the investigation properly. "Apparently these people want it," Poindexter said. "They want it, and I don't believe they want it because of the serious criminal consequences involved. ... They want it because Michael Vick may be involved."

Poindexter said he found out about a sealed search warrant filed in the U.S. Attorney's office about the time federal investigators executed it Thursday.

"If they've made a judgment that we're not acting prudently and with dispatch based on what we have, they've not acting very wisely," Poindexter said.

He said Surry County officials were preparing another search warrant for the property and that the investigative team planned to meet to make sure they had all the experts needed to make the search most effective. "There's a larger thing here, and it has nothing to do with any breach of protocol," Poindexter said. "There's something awful going on here. I don't know if it's racial. I don't know what it is."

State police assisted investigators from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Attorney's office in executing the warrant, Virginia State Police Sgt. D.S. Carr said, declining to comment further. Thursday evening, a state police evidence collection truck was parked inside the fence surrounding the house. Investigators could be seen carrying a large sheet of plywood and a box.

The U.S. Attorney's office would not confirm a search warrant was filed. Messages left at Brown's office were not returned, and a dispatcher said he left for the day at around 4 p.m.

An after-hours call to Vick's attorney, Larry Woodward of Virginia Beach, was not immediately returned.

During an April 25 drug raid on the home Vick owns in the county, authorities seized 66 dogs, including 55 pit bulls, and equipment that suggested someone at the property was involved in a dogfighting operation.

A search warrant affidavit said some of the dogs were in individual kennels and about 30 were tethered with "heavy logging-type chains" buried in the ground. The chains allowed the dogs to get close to each other, but not to have contact, one of myriad findings on the property that suggested a dogfighting operation.

Others included a rape stand, used to hold non-receptive dogs in place for mating; an electric treadmill modified to be used by dogs; a "pry bar" used to open the clamped-down mouths of dogs; and a bloodied piece of carpeting the authorities believe was used in dog fights. Carpeting gives dogs traction in a plywood fighting pit.

Vick has claimed he rarely visits the home and was unaware it could be involved in a criminal enterprise. He also has blamed family members for taking advantage of his generosity. Vick's cousin, Davon Boddie, was living at the home at the time of the raids.Vick, a registered dog breeder, has said in more recent interviews that his lawyers have advised him not to discuss the investigation.

Dog wins a race against time to bring aid to injured athleteBy Brian Metzler, Rocky Mountain News December 19, 2006

A prominent Colorado adventure athlete can thank her dog and a Utah search-and-rescue team for saving her life after she fell and injured herself while running and spent two nights in subfreezing weather near Moab last week. Danelle Ballengee, 35, of Dillon, will have surgery today at Denver Health Medical Center to repair a broken pelvis suffered while running with her dog near the Amasa Back Trail south of Moab last Wednesday.

She also is recovering from severe frostbite on her feet, internal bleeding and numerous cuts and bruises.

The two-time adventure racing world champion and elite triathlete, trail runner and mountain biker slipped on a patch of ice on Hurrah Pass and tumbled off three successive rock faces of 10 to 20 feet each.

A Grand County (Utah) Search and Rescue team on all-terrain vehicles found Ballengee at about 3:30 p.m. Friday after her dog, Taz, a 3-year-old German shepherd-golden retriever mix, led rescuers on a five-mile journey to the accident site.

"I'm just happy to be alive," she said. "I thought about my family and my friends and everything I do, and I just kept saying to myself, 'I can't die. I'm not ready to die.' But it would have been so easy to relax and curl up and die."

Ballengee left around noon Wednesday for what she thought would be a casual two- hour trail run in the 40-degree weather. She was wearing light running pants, two lightweight running shirts and a lightweight fleece top.

After the fall, Ballengee crawled about a quarter-mile on her hands and knees to try to find help.

During the night, she did sit-ups and kept her upper body moving to keep warm. She drank snowmelt from a puddle when the water in her hydration pack ran out and ate two packets of raspberry energy gel she had carried on the run.

Ballengee owns a home in Moab and spends a lot of time running, cycling, climbing and paddling there in preparation for adventure races. Sometimes she trains with friends but often just with Taz.

A Moab neighbor called Balengee's parents in Evergreen on Thursday after she hadn't seen any sign of Ballengee for more than a day.

"We've told her before to be safe and leave a note about where she's going, but that's not always possible," her mother, Peggy Ballengee, said Monday. "With all of the things Danelle does, we didn't really want to bother people. But we just had a gut feeling that we needed to do something, and thank God we did."

Police initially searched Ballengee's house for signs of foul play and notified authorities in Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Arizona about her missing vehicle. They also searched the Colorado River and nearby lakes on the advice of her parents, who thought she might have been kayaking.

Moab police found Ballengee's pickup truck at the Amasa Back trailhead at 12:30 p.m. Friday. As search-and-rescue personnel arrived, a dog matching the description of Taz was seen running around the trailhead.

"We were going to try to identify the dog, but the dog basically didn't want to be caught and instead turned around and headed back toward the trail," said Curt Brewer, chief deputy with the Grand County Sheriff's Office.

"When that happened, the search crew decided to follow the dog. And the dog took our rescue personnel right to her. I think we would have eventually found her, because we were in the right location, but the dog saved us some time," he said.

A helicopter airlifted Ballengee to St. Mary's Hospital in Grand Junction. She was moved to Denver on Saturday.

A titanium plate and pins will be inserted into her pelvis to repair the breaks. Doctors have told her it is unlikely that she will lose any toes because of the frostbite, but it could be two to six months before she can walk.

Nighttime temperatures dipped to the low 20s in the Moab area last week and reached the mid-40s during the day. A hunter died of exposure on Nov. 29 near Moab after getting stranded in the La Sal Mountains.

On the first night of Ballengee's ordeal, Taz slept with his head on her stomach, but the second night he was hesitant to get near her.

"The first night I couldn't really cuddle with him because I had to stay on my back, but he cuddled next to me and helped keep me warm," Danelle said. "But the second night he either got mad or he got a plan in his head.

Quote:The indictment handed down Tuesday against Falcons quarterback Michael Vick and three others describes in detail how they procured a property in Virginia for the purpose of staging dogfights, bought dogs and then fought them there, and in several other states, over a 6-year period. With at least three cooperating witnesses providing the details, federal authorities compiled a detailed case that traces the birth and rise of Bad Newz Kennels.

But not a single line in the 18-page indictment will generate more rage toward Vick and the others charged -- Purnell A. Peace, Quanis L. Phillips and Tony Taylor -- than a sentence near the end. It reads: "In or about April of 2007, Peace, Phillips and Vick executed approximately eight dogs that did not perform well in 'testing' sessions at 1915 Moonlight Road by various methods, including hanging, drowning and slamming at least one dog's body to the ground."

In interviews I conducted for an earlier story on the subculture of dogfighting and Vick's involvement, several experts described to me the process of "rolling" dogs. Owners take young dogs, usually puppies, and put them in an enclosed area and see how they react. They prod the dogs and urge them to get angry. If a dog shows aggression toward another dog, that's a positive. If a dog is timid, it is useless. Some fighters give away puppies that don't show the required "gameness." Other owners don't bother with the trouble of finding them a home and simply kill them.

Vick and his three associates, according to the indictment, fall in the latter category. Federal investigators allege Vick is a murderer of dogs who weren't willing to fight for his enjoyment. Even worse, his actions appear more sinister than most professional dogfighters.

Their mug shots, misdeeds and home addresses went online this month at the Virginia Dangerous Dog Registry, a new Web page modeled after the state’s sex offender registry. It lets residents find dogs in their county that have attacked a person or an animal, and that a judge has decided could cause injury again.

Created after dogs killed a toddler and an 82-year-old woman in separate incidents in the last two years, Virginia’s registry is part of a growing effort by states to deal with dogs deemed dangerous. Thirty-three states and the District of Columbia hold owners legally liable if their dogs maim or kill, and in 2006, Ohio became the first state to enact a breed ban, though it was later overturned.

In the last two years, nearly 100 municipalities have taken similar steps — banning pit bulls, Rottweilers, English bull terriers and American Staffordshire terriers, or passing regulations that require owners to use muzzles or short leashes in public, according to the American Kennel Club.

Last month, Texas responded to a November 2005 mauling death of a 76-year-old woman by enacting some of the harshest criminal penalties for delinquent dog owners, making it a felony with a possible 10-year prison sentence for anyone whose dog seriously injures a person while off its leash.

But lawmakers taking steps to deal with growing concerns have struggled to ensure public safety without impinging on the privacy and property rights of dog owners. Several of the measures have been overturned in the courts, and many national dog owner and veterinarian associations say the bans are difficult to enforce and ineffective since, they say, if one breed is banned, dog owners seeking aggressive dogs will simply begin fostering fierceness in other breeds.

After the indictment of the Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick, who is accused of running a dog-fighting ring from his property in Virginia, the Humane Society estimated that more than 30 percent of dogs in animal shelters were pit bulls, many of them trained as fighting dogs and later abandoned on the streets. That is up from 2 or 3 percent of the shelter population that were pit bulls 15 years ago, the officials said.

“Of course it’s a serious concern when you have more people wanting and training aggressive dogs, and more of those dogs are being abandoned,” said John Goodwin, an expert on animal fighting with the Humane Society.

Counties in Florida and New York have also created publicly accessible dangerous dog registries like the one in Virginia, and legislators in Hawaii are considering one. Critics of the registries say that by publicizing the home addresses of dangerous dogs, they invite harassment by neighbors and invade the privacy of dog owners. Seventeen states now have a “one bite rule” protecting dog owners from liability for the first attack.

“It seems a little unfair to single out a dog if they haven’t done something in the past,” said Jacqueline Short, 40, who lives in Newport News, Va. She is Bear’s owner and says the bicyclist was her pet’s first biting offense.

Now that Bear has been officially designated a dangerous dog, he must be muzzled and walked on a short leash when he is taken in public. But Ms. Short says the toughest requirement has been the $100,000 liability insurance that she now has to carry, which costs about $1,000 a year.

“Courts need to look at the dog’s history and the severity of the incident,” Ms. Short said, “and if the dogs haven’t shown aggression in the past then that should be taken into account before they are considered dangerous.”

Even with stiffer penalties, animal control departments are often understaffed and under-financed and therefore unable to apply the laws.

“Leash laws don’t work because they’re not enforced,” said Mary Hill, the sister of Lillian Stiles, who was killed in Texas in November 2005 by a pack of dogs and whose death inspired the state’s law.

Ms. Hill, who likes to exercise regularly, said she was often frustrated by dogs left off their leashes that chase and harass runners and walkers.

Each year, roughly 4.7 million people are bitten by dogs and about 800,000, half of them children, seek medical attention, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

On average, a dozen people die each year from dog attacks, according to the center. In 2003, 32 people died from dog-related incidents.==========

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From 1979 to 1998, more than half of the dog-related fatalities were caused by pit bulls and Rottweilers, according to a study published in 2000 in The Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association.

Randall Lockwood, a senior vice president of the association and one of the authors of that study, said it was a mistake to make policy decisions based on dog-related fatalities, because they are so rare.

“In the ’70s, Dobermans were the scary dogs of choice, and they were involved in more fatalities,” Mr. Lockwood said. “And later, German shepherds and St. Bernards used to be the ones involved in attacks, which is probably why Stephen King chose to make Cujo a St. Bernard, not a pit bull.” Fatalities are, above all, a reflection of the type of dog that is popular at a given time among people who want to own an aggressive status symbol, he said.

Pit bulls have undoubtedly become that symbol in recent years, and communities that have tried to ban them have run into problems. At least 12 states prohibit local municipalities from passing breed-specific legislation, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Critics say the bans are costly and impractical to enforce since breeds are often difficult to identify and dogs are often of mixed breed.

In March 2006, Ohio’s law banning pit bulls was overturned on the grounds that the state could not prove that pit bulls were inherently more dangerous than other breeds.

In Virginia, 75 to 100 dogs have been declared dangerous by a judge, and many of them have been euthanized or moved out of state.

But victims say the insurance is actually the most important part of Virginia’s new law.

Betty Greene’s mother, Dorothy Sullivan, 82, was killed by a neighbor’s three pit bulls that entered her yard. Ms. Greene said she had heard from a number of victims of dog attacks who, more often than not, ended up having to pay for their hospital bills.

The three pit bulls were euthanized and the owner was sentenced to three years in prison for involuntary manslaughter, Ms. Greene said.

“There is no way to explain the grief,” she said. “It’s even worse when the victim has to pay for the lawyers, the death, the hospital bills.”

MASONVILLE, Colo. - Zoey is a Chihuahua, but when a rattlesnake lunged at her owners' 1-year-old grandson, she was a real bulldog.

Booker West was splashing his hands in a birdbath in his grandparents' northern Colorado back yard when the snake slithered up to the toddler, rattled and struck. Five-pound Zoey jumped in the way and took the bites.

"She got in between Booker and the snake, and that's when I heard her yipe," said Monty Long, the boy's grandfather.

The dog required treatment and for a time it appeared she might not survive. Now she prances about.

i almost started another thread on 'hunting' but since this also relates to dogs i decided to do it here, and some of this is not directly related to dogs.

so forthe first time i went on a hunt for wild pigs with a local guy in northern california coast using 4 dogs. the dogs were pit, australian shepard, mcnab, and other mixes. dogs that are fierce enough to fight, good hunting instincts, good runners without tiring, etc.

one of my friends grew up in the hills several miles inland of the ocean where local people have been living mostly by logging up until recently with lots of free time. a past time and way to put meat on the table was huntingthe hogs. mainly male boars in the summer with more fat, and female sows in the fall winter more fat then. and the sows are nursing in the summer.

4 nights ago we went out, 4 of us, 4 dogs. 1 female dog which was her first time and learning from the others. she seemed to show interest but was real hesitant and the other 3 did most of the hunting. they would run ahead and sniff and hunt and run back tous repeatedly. we walked at first on an old road overgrown at dusk. within minutes the fastest dog barked a mountain away, in the coastal mountains and these were not tall ones. we started running and trying to figure out where he was as he was unusually quiet, barely any baying. soon we heard more barking as the oldest most experienced and alpha male ran to catch up and number 3 named rasscal and beta dog who was staying back, why i am not sure followed only until we were right on the fight. so we we hustled down the valley and up a mountian or huge hill and the sow started squealing super loud. they had caught her in a small pool of water 3 feet deep at the most. 3 dogs on her head, 2 on the ears dragging her deeper. the guy taking us out grabbed her by the rear leg and dragged her back and i stabbed her in the lungs. the female new dog watched and barely took part. the dogs were vicious, she was about 130 lbs. roughly. we were hoping for a boar, and i was quite nervous at first hunting for boars at night when they routinely stand and fight and can gut a dog or a human by swinging their head.

we gutted her and tied front legs to back ones and packed her out like a backpack. we hunted for a few more hours with no hogs chased. the guy we went with was real in tune with his dog pack, explaining and talking about what he saw and such the whole night. i felt quite a bond with the dogs after the kill as we all took part in it. it was great to see dogs live something real and use their bodies closely to what they were designed to do, more than trot around parks. and they knew we hunted with them, even back at the house when we started to get ready, they knew it was time to hunt. and zack the guy wh took us out was choosing which dogs to take and he mostly let them decide. when it was time to go the oldest and most experienced was injured and seemed not interested but jumped in the truck at the last minute, and one refused to go being recently ground into the dirt and ripped up by a boar, not ready to face another. i hope we go again, there is nothing like the chase. tim

For a long time, domesticated dogs were seen as just the slobbering, dumbed-down ancestor of the wild wolf. Dogs, though, have learned a few tricks of their own through the millennia -- and can teach us a lot about ourselves.

Guinness the border collie loves the program. Flip on the monitor, and she can sit for hours watching the colorful images flitting across the screen -- like a teenager in front of a Playstation. As soon as the images change she presses the touch screen with her nose. If she selects the correct one of two photos, a piece of dry dog food automatically drops down to her feet. If she selects the wrong one, the screen turns red for a moment, and then the exercise continues.

Guinness, though, rarely makes mistakes. She can identify different landscapes, and picking out dog breeds, likewise, doesn't present much of a challenge. She's even adept at choosing human faces. "It's only when she is supposed to recognize the same face in different photos that she makes a lot of mistakes," explains Friederike Range, a biologist at the University of Vienna.

Guinness isn't the only dog able to master these image experiments. Since the university's "Clever Dog Lab" opened its doors in a ground floor apartment in Vienna's Ninth District in April, the city's dog owners have inundated the place. "So far only one or two animals have shown no interest in the computer," says Range. "For most of them it's a blast."

What may seem like simple amusement for Guinness and her fellow canines is in fact revolutionizing cognitive research. Range is the first animal researcher to attempt to lure domestic dogs to a touch screen. Scientists in her field have spent decades working with pigeons pecking at pictures, conversing with apes using brightly colored touch symbols, and listening in on the grunting noises made by seals. But the talents of Canis familiaris remained largely unexplored.

Smarter than Apes?

For serious scientists, Lassie and her friends were deemed little more than dumbed-down ancestors of the wolf, degenerated into panting morons by millennia of breeding. But a younger generation of researchers has set out to restore the reputations of our beloved pets. "Dogs can do things that we long believed only humans had mastered," says Juliane Kaminski of the Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Evolutionary Anthropology in the eastern German city of Leipzig.

FROM THE MAGAZINE Find out how you can reprint this DER SPIEGEL article in your publication. It is precisely their proximity to people -- which disqualified our four-legged friends as a model for so long -- that now makes them interesting to animal researchers. "When it comes to understanding human behavior, no mammal comes even close to the dog," says Kaminski. Her Leipzig research team has demonstrated that dogs are far better than the supposedly clever apes at interpreting human gestures.

The researchers held two containers, one empty and the other containing food, in front of chimpanzees and dogs. Then they pointed to the correct container. The canines understood the gesture immediately, while the apes, genetically much more closely related to humans, were often perplexed by the pointing finger.

That's not all. Many dogs were even capable of interpreting the researcher's gaze. When the scientists looked at a container, the dogs would search inside for food, but when they looked in the direction of the container but focused on a point above it on the wall, the dogs were able to understand that this was not meant as a sign.

Follow the Finger

Dogs are so geared toward communication with people that it seems to run in their genes. For a still-unpublished study, Kaminski and her fellow researchers repeated the pointing experiment with six-week-old puppies. Astonishingly, even the puppies understood immediately that it was worth investigating the area the human finger was pointing to.

"Puppies are still with their mother at six weeks. The phase in which they are most susceptible to human influence only begins after that," explains Kaminski. Her conclusion is that the animals must already have the innate ability to interpret human gestures.

In a complex experiment, Adám Miklósi, a biologist at the Hungarian Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest and one of the pioneers of modern dog research, demonstrated that wolves, on the other hand, lack these communicative abilities, nor are they capable of learning them. He had 13 of his students each raise one wolf puppy. The students fed the wolves with bottles, took them home and onto the subway, and taught them to walk on a leash and respond to basic commands.

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After a few months the researchers had the young wolves and a group of young dogs attempt the same task. First both groups were taught to remove a piece of meat from a container. After a while, the investigators closed the containers. While the young wolves kept trying to get to the food, the dogs stopped immediately, sat down in front of their human trainers and stared at them.

"The wolves were only interested in the meat," says Miklósi, "and, of course, so were the dogs, but apparently they knew that they would reach their goal more quickly by communicating with the people."

MPI researcher Kaminski believes "that dogs can show us how simple mechanisms can enable highly complex understanding." Human beings also had to learn highly developed communication over the course of the millennia, which leads the MPI researchers to hope that the dog can in fact teach his owners a great deal about their own history. "If two remotely related species have similar characteristics, they probably developed as a result of comparable evolutionary processes," says Michael Tomasello, one of Kaminski's colleagues.

Even more attractive for researchers: dogs are easy to study. "The great advantage of dogs is that we can study them in their natural habitat without any great effort," explains Adám Miklósi.==========Behavioral Science Turns to Dogs for AnswersBy Julia Koch

Part 2: How Your Dog and Your Kid Are Similar

Kaminski's Leipzig team attracted a lot of attention three years ago with their report on Rico, an exceptional border collie who was able to tell more than 200 different toys apart. Even more astonishing was the fact that he learned new concepts using the same principle with which young children learn the meaning of new words. Since then the owners of a number of dogs with similar abilities have contacted the institute in Leipzig. Apparently Rico the memory genius was not an isolated case.

Partly because of such sensational stories, dog research has "literally exploded" in recent years, says Britta Osthaus, a psychologist with the University of Exeter in Great Britain. Osthaus is examining whether dogs have a basic understanding of physical processes and can think logically.

Biologist Range is mainly interested in finding out which learning strategies dogs use. Using a touch screen, she wants to test whether the animals can transfer information from the screen to reality and whether, like people, they learn by a process of elimination. "The dog is just beginning to become a model organism for animal psychology," says Range, "and there is so much left to study."

Follow Guinness

Range has already shown that dogs use a learning strategy -- selective imitation -- that, until recently, was believed to be unique to human children once they turned a year old. She taught her own dog to push a handle to open a food dispenser. Every dog would instinctively use its snout to push on such a device. But Guinness was only rewarded when she used her paw.

FROM THE MAGAZINE Find out how you can reprint this DER SPIEGEL article in your publication. Once Guinness had learned the technique, individual dogs were brought in to observe her. If Guinness had a ball in her mouth, so that it was obvious that she could not use her snout, most of the observers pushed on the handle with their snouts. But when they saw Guinness without a ball they usually used their paws. If Guinness chose the more difficult method for no apparent reason, the dogs apparently concluded that there must be some advantage to this behavior.

Young children behave in a similar way. If they observe an adult activating a light switch with his forehead instead of his hands, they only imitate the behavior if the adult's hands are free. In other words, they are clearly, and deliberately, choosing the eccentric method. But if the adult uses his forehead because he has his hands full, most of the children flick the switch with their hand.

It is no coincidence that the domestic dog's ascent to stardom in behavioral research coincides with its career as a lifestyle accessory. "In the past, dogs were mainly trained to obey, and many things were simply forbidden," says Range. "But if a dog only dares to breathe when his owner allows him to, it's difficult to study his cognitive abilities."

Border Collies Outclass them All

Nowadays dog owners send their beloved pets to agility training, where they balance on ramps and crawl through tubes. Some dogs attend "dog dancing" sessions, and puppy training has become all the rage. "Dog education has changed," says Range.

With this change comes clear evidence of cognitive differences. The breeds that were used for hunting or as herding dogs only a few dog generations ago have proven to be especially clever. Border collies like Rico and Guinness would probably be happiest watching over their own herds of sheep. "They simply want to work," says Range. American dog researcher Stanley Coren is convinced that the border collie is the most intelligent of the roughly 400 breeds of dog.

Judging by the numbers of volunteers who show up at Range's dog behavior laboratory, many owners are convinced that their dogs are exceptionally gifted. Range gets two to three inquiries a week from dog owners wanting to test their dogs for intelligence. The Leipzig researchers already have about 1,000 potential test dogs in their database.

"There is a village near Exeter where I now know every dog," says British researcher Osthaus. This is surprising, because her experiments are usually frustrating for dog lovers. "It's almost embarrassing to me, but with my experiments I tend to run up against the limits of dog intelligence."

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Osthaus recently placed a trellis in her laboratory. The test dog was placed on one side of the trellis and the owner on the other. The animal was able to see its owner through the gaps in the trellis, and an opening was easily visible at one end of the trellis, which was several meters long.

And Cats?

After the dogs had slipped through the opening several times, Osthaus moved the barrier so that the opening was now on the opposite side of the room. "All 20 dogs ran to the wrong side first," says Osthaus. Apparently habit trumps canine common sense. A Doberman simply sat down where the opening had been, while another dog even tried to run through the trellis.

As clever as dogs are when it comes to all things relating to their masters, they fail miserably when logic comes into play. For example, dogs can pull a string to drag a piece of meat out of a box. But when Osthaus placed two pieces of string in a crisscross pattern, they always pulled on the string that led in a straight line to the meat. "They simply do not understand the connection through the string," says Osthaus.

Another experiment the Exeter psychologist performed offers some consolation to dog lovers. Osthaus repeated the test with a group of cats, a species that loves playing with strings. The cats, says Osthaus, "did far worse than the dogs."

My wife and I went to the Berkeley animal shelter to see about adopting a dog (we already have a shih tzu, see my avatar), and 90% of the dogs they had were Pit Bulls or Staffordshire Bull Terriers. I wouldn't be against getting one of these if we had a bigger house and the dog was not bred for aggression. Unfortunately though, the latter doesn't seem to be the case most of the ones at the shelter. It really sucks that there are so many people out there breeding dogs that either don't know what the hell they're doing or are specifically breeding for undesirable qualities (like aggression).

My wife and I went to the Berkeley animal shelter to see about adopting a dog (we already have a shih tzu, see my avatar), and 90% of the dogs they had were Pit Bulls or Staffordshire Bull Terriers. I wouldn't be against getting one of these if we had a bigger house and the dog was not bred for aggression. Unfortunately though, the latter doesn't seem to be the case most of the ones at the shelter. It really sucks that there are so many people out there breeding dogs that either don't know what the hell they're doing or are specifically breeding for undesirable qualities (like aggression).

@rogt

This new puppy addition from Bigblock will add to my family a 4th Pitbull The current 3 is a blue ( 90lbs) Named "Crom" a Red Nose with Green Eyes my boy ( 98lbs) Brutis and another Red nose with red eyes named (92lbs) Leonidus This new Pup I am gonna bring home will be LapuLapu...All my pits are kind hearted and have never attacked another dog nor have attacked people..However..When the Sun goes down and they are no longer in happy day dance..I would not jump over my gate or try to break in..At night their whole attitude changes to patrolling my house..

I have a 11 year old son and a about to be 2 year old Daughter and I have found on some night they have pushed her door open and two are laying in front of her door and another one is laying close by..

Or sometimes they will break up and guard everyones door...Son, Daughter and my lady and myself all have door guardians..It baffles me..lol!

So woah to the fool who breaks into my house at night..If you come, you better come deep and creep cause a total of 280lbs of Pitbull does not want you in our house when the Sun goes down.

Point taken. But surely you'll agree that some breeds are more prone to excessive aggression than others. Some of the sweetest dogs I've ever met were pit bulls or rotties, but I have no doubt that they came from experienced, reputable breeders and received proper training as puppies. That and their owner made sure his lifestyle allowed for meeting the dog's exercise needs before deciding to have him.

In addition to exercise, there is the matter of having a feel for how the dog sees the world. An Akita for example sees things very strongly in terms of respect, territory, and the bond of the pack. The hunting drive can be quite undiluted from that of the wolf. Thus, if the dog is given to understand the boundaries of the territory that belongs to the pack e.g. the house and the yard and he sees you noticing the subtle little things he does to protect then he feels who he is meant to be.

For example, when the children are upstairs and the wife is downstairs and he is positioned just so at the top of the stairs to monitor both levels and his ears are doing the radar thing even as his head is down and then there is a noise out of order with the flow of things and he coils up, ready to activate should it be necessary, let him see you do the same, have a moment of eye contact and then decide together wheth the noise is OK or not. He knows in this warrior moment that he is not alone, that you and he are pack across the frontiers of man meets dog. Of course usually it is nothing and together you and he decide to deactivate. He releases his coil up and settles in again, fully juiced in the importance of what he does and who he is.

In addition to exercise, there is the matter of having a feel for how the dog sees the world. An Akita for example sees things very strongly in terms of respect, territory, and the bond of the pack. The hunting drive can be quite undiluted from that of the wolf. Thus, if the dog is given to understand the boundaries of the territory that belongs to the pack e.g. the house and the yard and he sees you noticing the subtle little things he does to protect then he feels who he is meant to be.

For example, when the children are upstairs and the wife is downstairs and he is positioned just so at the top of the stairs to monitor both levels and his ears are doing the radar thing even as his head is down and then there is a noise out of order with the flow of things and he coils up, ready to activate should it be necessary, let him see you do the same, have a moment of eye contact and then decide together wheth the noise is OK or not. He knows in this warrior moment that he is not alone, that you and he are pack across the frontiers of man meets dog. Of course usually it is nothing and together you and he decide to deactivate. He releases his coil up and settles in again, fully juiced in the importance of what he does and who he is.

This too is aggression. To each his own. For me, this.

When someone knocks at our door the "3 Brothers" will follow suit with either my Childrens Mother or with me to greet who is at the door and they seem to wait..watching how either one of us takes the situation..As soon as I look at them and say " It's all good" They march away..But one always watches whats going on..

The pack thing is always there. I was walking with my Family with Son on side Mom on his other side and us pushing my Daughter in her stroller. I was walking all three of the Brothers and a Man was walking his 2 rots. I think it caught my boys off guard because they saw them coming and surrounded us..

My Boy Brutis took to the front and the others moves along the other sides and took on what I like to call shield mode lol! The man nooded and said hello and his dogs passed and the brothers continued to walk like that for the rest of our walk.

My soon to be wife can also take them for walks and they wont pull wont push and allow her to control them. I once asked her to take her protection with her and she laughed and said "why? I got this guys"

But the moral of the story is. I understand that effect Crafty. My dog's always look to make sure that the situation is ok and look at me so we can all three decide if that noise was ok.

The one thing I find funny is that there is always one of them that just does not buy it and will walk over to check it out.

There's a new lease on life for the dogs of war: For Veteran's day, SPCA International kicked off a program to repatriate the Iraqi pets that have become adored companions of American troops serving in Iraq. Inspiring the effort was a story the group learned of one flea-bitten and starved puppy named Charlie. The "size of a potato," he was rescued during a routine patrol and gradually brought from the edge of extinction by a diet of MREs. He's now the official Charlie Company mascot.

The plan, called Operation Baghdad Pups (www.baghdadpups.com), aims to make sure "no buddy gets left behind," despite obstructionist military regulations and a cost estimated at $4000 per dog. The bond between soldiers and their faithful friends, of course, is legendary: A dog named "Stubby" received the rank of sergeant in WWI and at least three dogs were recognized for valor in WWII. These days, there's even a United States War Dogs Association to honor the memory of man's best friend in peace and war.

Woof, The Eastern coyote has hybridized with the Eastern red wolf, which makes for a much larger animal than the Western coyote and it has more wolf like tendenices such as packing up during cold weather periods. There has been a few instances of aggressive behavior toward humans as well. I trap and hunt coyotes here where I live, they are amazing animals but they really are taking a toll on livestock. P.C.

Woof, I caught a red fox this morning in one of the traps I had out for coyotes. I do my best to make a set animal specific so I don't catch untargeted critters but it's impossible not to attract fox to a coyote set. So, I use offset jaw, paw catch steeltraps. These traps have a gap between the jaws after they been tripped that prevents them from damaging the legs of smaller animals and that way I can release them. The fox I caught was a young female, a beautiful animal with a fluffy red, black tipped tail that was longer than the length of her body. As I approached her she was doing her best to get away and as I came closer she froze, hoping I wouldn't see her. I spoke to her saying hi there foxy, her head tilted in typical dog fashion. I didn't want to set her into a panic trying to get away so I took my time getting my release pole ready. She was totally fixated on me, her eyes never blinked. As I put the loop over her head she bit it and started trying to get away again but I was able to get her under control fairly quick. I had some trouble trying to get the trap in position where I could release the jaws and at some point my hand and her mouth came within range. She showed no aggression at all and continued to stare me down with a look that seem to say your lucky I'm not a coyote. I eased up on the trap and her foot came out then I stepped back and took the loop off her head. She continued to just sit there staring at me while I talked to her, not realizing she was free. Finally I said you can go now and clapped my hands; she was off like a shot. There is something about having an interaction with wild animal (that doesn't involve getting bit) that really speaks to the buried connections of our animal selves. Wonderful! P.C.

CHEYENNE, Wyo. — Sheltered for many years by federal species protection law, the gray wolves of the West are about to step out onto the high wire of life in the real world, when their status as endangered animals formally comes to an end early this year.

The so-called delisting is scheduled to begin in late March, almost five years later than federal wildlife managers first proposed, mainly because of human tussles here in Wyoming over the politics of managing the wolves.

Now changes during that time are likely to make the transition even more complicated. As the federal government and the State of Wyoming sparred in court over whether Wyoming’s hard-edged management plan was really a recipe for wolf eradication, as some critics said, the wolf population soared. (The reworked plan was approved by the federal government in November.)

During that period, many parts of the human West were changing, too. Where unsentimental rancher attitudes — that wolves were unwelcome predators, threatening the cattle economy — once prevailed, thousands of newcomers have moved in, buying up homesteads as rural retreats, especially near Yellowstone National Park, where the wolves began their recovery in 1995 and from which they have spread far and wide.

The result is that there are far more wolves to manage today than there once would have been five years ago — which could mean, biologists say, more killing of wolves just to keep the population in check. And that blood-letting might not be quite as popular as it once was.

“If they’d delisted when the numbers were smaller, the states would have been seen as heroes and good managers,” said Ed Bangs, the wolf recovery coordinator at the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. “Now people will say they’re murderers.”

Wolves are intelligent, adaptable, highly mobile in staking out new territory, and capable of rapid reproduction rates if food sources are good and humans with rifles or poison are kept in check by government gridlock — and that is precisely what happened.

From the 41 animals that were released inside Yellowstone from 1995 to 1997, mostly from Canada, the population grew to 650 wolves in 2002 and more than 1,500 today in Wyoming, Montana and Idaho. The wolves have spread across an area twice the size of New York State and are growing at a rate of about 24 percent a year, according to federal wolf-counts.

Human head counts have also climbed in the same turf. From 1995 to 2005, a 25-county area, in three states, that centers on Yellowstone grew by 12 percent, to about 691,000 people, according to a report earlier this year by the Center for the Rocky Mountain West at the University of Montana. That compares to a 6 percent growth rate for Wyoming as a whole in that period, 7.5 percent for all of Montana, and 19 percent for Idaho. The wolf population has grown faster in Idaho than any place else in the region, doubling to about 800 in the past four years.

The director of the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, Terry Cleveland, said changes in economics and attitude were creating a profound wrinkle in the outlook for human-wolf relations. Mr. Cleveland, a 39-year-veteran with the department, said that many newcomers, who are more interested in breath-taking vistas than the price of feed-grain and calves, do not see wolves the way older residents do.

In the public comment period for Wyoming’s wolf plan, sizable majorities of residents in the counties near Yellowstone expressed opposition. Teton County, around Jackson Hole, led the way, with more than 95 percent of negative comment about the plan, according an analysis by the state. Many respondents feared that the plan would lead to more killing of wolves than necessary.

“It used to be, ‘Yeah, we live near wild animals,’ now it’s like, ‘Gosh, we need to manage them, and it’s the job of the state to do that,’ ” said Meg Daly, a writer in Jackson, who submitted a comment opposing the wolf plan and recently spoke to a reporter by telephone. Ms. Daly said she had lived in Wyoming as a child and moved back last year.

Many new land owners around Yellowstone have also barred the hunting of animals like elk on their property, sometimes, in a single pen stroke, closing off thousands of acres that Wyoming hunters had used for decades. Mr. Cleveland said he expected that those same “no trespassing” signs would be up and in force, creating de facto wolf sanctuaries, when wolf hunters or state wildlife managers started coming around this year. But the trend of land enclosure, Mr. Cleveland said, is probably not in the wolf’s long-term interest.

“As large ranches become less economically viable, the alternative is 40-acre subdivisions,” he said, “and that is not compatible with any kind of wildlife.”

Some advocates of wolf protection say that for all the talk of moderation and the nods to a changing ethos, old attitudes will take over once the gray wolf is delisted.

“I think it’s going to be open season,” said Suzanne Stone, a wolf specialist at Defenders of Wildlife, a national conservation group.

Ms. Stone said she thought the changes that led to federal approval of Wyoming’s wolf plan were mostly cosmetic.

Ms. Stone and others are concerned that the plan grants Wyoming something that no other state in the Yellowstone region received: the right to kill wolves at any time by any means across most of the state.

In the northwest corner near Yellowstone and in Idaho and Montana, wolves will be classified as trophy game animals and may be killed only in strictly controlled numbers by licensed hunters. In the 80 percent of Wyoming outside the Yellowstone area, however, wolves will be labeled predators, with no limits and no permits required to kill them.

The state has pledged to maintain at least 15 breeding pairs, or about 150 animals, in a five-county region around the park. The state now has about 362 wolves, according to the most recent estimates in late September.

That formulation sounds just about right to Chip Clouse.

“I support no wolves on private land, and right now we have wolves running rampant,” said Mr. Clouse, a rancher and a former outfitter in Cody, just east of Yellowstone, who has lived in Wyoming for 37 years. “They brought the wolves in for people to see on the public lands, in the park, and what has happened is that they have grown so many packs that they’re now impeding on people who are just trying to live and make a living on their own property.”

Joel DiPaola, a chef at a Jackson ski resort who arrived in Wyoming from Connecticut in the early 1990s, just before the wolves, said he thought much of the huffing and puffing about the animals was emotional and would make little difference.

“As the state was dragging its feet, the wolves were breeding and expanding,” Mr. DiPaola said. “It’s now going to be almost impossible to get rid of them even if they try. Once they seem to get a foothold and have a refuge in the parks, they’re here.”

A dog's run-in with a skunk sends his owner scrambling for cleaning ideas. He ultimately finds an easy solution.By David Colker,Los Angeles Times Staff Writer January 27, 2008 Work stinks.

I'm not talking about my job, which I love. Honest.

No, it was a certain emanation noticed by a colleague who innocently approached my desk and asked, "Has there been a skunk back here?"

Early that morning my ever-curious dog, Earl, had gotten sprayed by a skunk in the backyard. Before I could catch him, he sped back into the house through his doggy door, frantically rubbing against everything in sight, starting with the bed.

It was like a Pepe Le Pew cartoon with Smell-O-Vision.

As much as I tried to clean the smell, starting by giving Earl a bath, my olfactory nerves were so overcome that I missed items. Like my sweater, which I had brought into the office that morning. Even my hands carried the stench, though I had washed them repeatedly.

And so began my quest to eradicate skunk spray from dog, furniture, clothes and body. You'd think there'd be solid information on how this can be done, but the Internet and the friendly advice of friends -- all of whom stood at a distance -- were full of misconceptions.

There are remedies, however, based in science. One was even featured in a chemistry journal.

It would be wise to heed them. They probably will be needed more often as we continue to encroach on natural habitats.

Veterinarian Sylvia Domotor, whose office is in Monrovia in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, said skunks had found a highly agreeable habitat in suburbia.

"They're very adaptable to living in communities," said Domotor, who has practiced in San Gabriel Valley communities for more than 20 years. "They're small, nocturnal. They use sewers as highways, and bushy backyards are perfect for them."

Also, residential communities partly shield them from two of their natural enemies: coyotes and bears.

"In this area," Domotor said, "skunks are not even what I consider to be mountain animals anymore."

Earl and I just wanted our house back. And as for my career and social life, essence of Pepe wasn't likely to be a boon to either.

Luckily, an unassuming engineer in the Midwest hit upon the prime solution to skunk smell several years ago when he wasn't even trying.

"I was working on a project that produced hydrogen sulfide gas as a byproduct," said materials engineer Paul Krebaum in Lisle, Ill., a suburb of Chicago. "The gas vented up and then came back into the building through the air-conditioner intakes."

This didn't make him popular with others in the building.

"The gas," he said, "had your basic rotten-egg, sewer-gas odor."

Krebaum mixed a compound that neutralized the odor. It was placed in filters in the venting system, and the complaints stopped.

The project he was working on never made it to market. But in 1993, a colleague mentioned that the family pet had gotten sprayed by a skunk.

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The common wisdom was to use commercially available, often expensive, concoctions with marginal results or a home remedy such as tomato juice that merely masked the smell for a while.

"All you ended up with was a pink dog and a pink bathroom," Krebaum said.

He figured that a weakened version of the solution he used to deal with the gas, which was a cousin to the skunk smell, might work.

Not only did it work, but the ingredients also were available in most supermarkets.

Krebaum, 47, has modified the pet version over the years. Here's the current formula:

Mix together a quart of hydrogen peroxide (3% strength), a quarter cup of baking soda and 1 or 2 teaspoons of liquid soap. Many brands will do, but Krebaum said Softsoap and Ivory Liquid worked particularly well.

Wearing latex gloves to protect your hands, massage the solution into the fur, being careful not to let it drip into the pet's eyes. Let it sit for about five minutes and then rinse with warm water.

That's it. The skunk smell should be completely or almost gone. The process can be repeated if the smell is still prominent.

The process works by breaking down skunk spray, which is composed mostly of highly pungent compounds called thiols. Spoiled food and rotten eggs also contain the highly nose-sensitive thiols. The end product of that chemical process is a sodium salt.

Krebaum said the mixture was safe for dogs and cats if used carefully.

"The stuff that people put on their hair to bleach it is far stronger," he said. "The worst that could happen with a pet, I figured, is that it would come out a shade lighter."

He gave out the formula to those who needed it and considered making it as a commercial product. The main problem was that the solution, as formulated, had to be mixed just before being applied or it would lose its effectiveness. Worse, it produces a gas that could make a closed container explode on a shelf.

He figured out how to possibly get around these problems but still wasn't enthusiastic.

"The people I was working for at the time weren't interested in this kind of product," Krebaum said. "And I already get paid well as an engineer. So I thought, 'Why not just give it away?' "

He published the formula in Chemical and Engineering News in 1993 and later exposed it to a huge audience when he put it on the Web at home.earthlink.net/~skunkremedy/home.

Earl is a smallish mutt of about 20 pounds, but I mixed up a double batch that evening to make sure I could get the solution deep into his fur.

I put him in the bathtub and the process began. Although Earl looked at me with those what-did-I-do-wrong eyes, he didn't squirm much as I applied the mixture. For the area near his eyes, I used an old washcloth.

I let a bit of the solution wash over my hands too, then rinsed us both with tepid tap water.

As I dried Earl and wrapped him in clean towels, there was none of the stench that had packed such a wallop.

Then came loads of laundry that included everything he had touched, including old sheets used to cover the furniture during the day.

I added to each load a scoop of OxiClean stain remover -- more of Krebaum's advice. "It basically uses a hydrogen peroxide-like compound," he said. Everything came out smelling fresh.

By 2:30 a.m., I got to bed, with a fluffy, sweet-smelling, slightly lighter-in-color Earl curled up beside me.

CHINO HILLS, Calif. — A nanny pulled a 2-year-old girl from the jaws of a coyote when the animal attacked the toddler and tried to carry her away in its mouth, officials said.

The girl was playing Friday in a sandbox at Alterra Park in Chino Hills in San Bernardino County. Around 10:30 a.m., the caretaker heard screaming and saw a coyote trying to carry the child off in its mouth, officials said.

The babysitter grabbed the child and pulled her from the coyote's grasp, the sheriff's department said in a statement.

The coyote then ran off into nearby brush.

The child suffered wounds to her buttocks and was taken to Chino Valley Medical Center and was later released, director of nursing Anne Marie Robertson said. She was later transported to Loma Linda University Medical Center to receive the rabies vaccine.

San Bernardino County Animal Control and the State Department of Fish and Game were searching for the animal, Wiltshire said.

Miller said there was another attack in the area in October when a coyote bit a 3-year-old girl playing in a cul-de-sac. The girl needed treatment for puncture wounds to the head and thigh, Miller said.

California 2-Year-Old Dragged From Yard by Coyote in Third Such Attack in Five Days

Wednesday, May 07, 2008

LAKE ARROWHEAD, Calif. — A coyote grabbed a 2-year-old girl by the head and tried to drag her from the front yard of her mountain home in the third incident of a coyote threatening a small child in Southern California in five days, authorities said.

The coyote attacked the girl around noon Tuesday when her mother, Melissa Rowley, went inside the home for a moment to put away a camera, the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department said in an incident report.

Rowley came out of the house and saw the coyote dragging her daughter towards a street. She ran towards her daughter, and the animal released the girl and ran away, said sheriff's spokeswoman Arden Wiltshire.

Rowley took her daughter to a hospital where the toddler was treated for several punctures to the head and neck area, and a laceration on her mouth. She was then flown to Loma Linda University Hospital for further treatment, although her injuries were not life-threatening.

State Fish and Game wardens and county animal control authorities set traps for the coyote and were monitoring the neighborhood high in the San Bernardino Mountains about 65 miles miles northeast of Los Angeles.On Friday, a nanny pulled a 2-year-old girl from the jaws of a coyote at Alterra Park in Chino Hills, a San Bernardino County community about 30 miles east of Los Angeles. The girl suffered puncture wounds to her buttocks and was treated at a hospital.

A coyote came after another toddler in the same park Sunday. The child's father kicked and chased the coyote away.

Alterra Park is near Chino Hills State Park, a natural open space of thousands of acres spanning nearly 31 miles.

Sheriff's officials at first said the animals appeared aggressive and should be put down. Animal rights groups argued that the dogs should be spared.

"The undersheriff has rethought his position on the dogs involved in the pornography," said sheriff's Capt. John Bowman. "Because of their status as being victims in this whole thing, he decided they will not be euthanized.

"His intent is to maintain them until they can be rehabilitated and then to get them adopted by people or organizations who are aware of their background and get a good home for all of them."

The sheriff's office received evidence the dogs had been filmed dozens of times performing sex acts with a woman.

A chained pit bull attacked and killed a 3-year-old boy Tuesday night in south Jackson.

Jackson police would not identify the toddler.The mauling happened about 9 p.m. while the child played outside with friends at 112 Maple Ridge Drive across the street from his home."Right now, our big question is: Where were the parents?" said police spokesman Sgt. Jeffery Scott. "This child was mauled to death. What was that 3-year-old doing by himself?"Scott said investigators were still interviewing witnesses late Tuesday. He said it was too early to say whether homeowners Shannon and Shaunda Reason, who own the dog named Blue Eyes, or anyone else would be charged.The attack occurred when the boy wandered from the front yard into the carport where the dog was, Scott said. As the child made the corner toward the back of the house, he met the dog face-to-face.The 2 1/2-year-old pit bull bit into the boy's neck and upper torso. Police said the dog then dragged the boy inside the Reasons' house, where he died.When police and animal control officers arrived, Scott said the dog charged them, forcing officers to open fire. The dog was wounded but not killed.Now in animal control custody, the dog will be quarantined and observed for 10 days before officials decide whether it should be euthanized.The Reasons were being questioned late Tuesday.Down the street, Isaac Stuckley said he heard the attack and mistakenly thought someone had been shot or stabbed."It happened so quick," the 12-year neighborhood resident said. "A lot of screaming, yelling and cursing - I thought a big fight had broken out."Stuckley said the Reasons keep three pit bulls.Stuckley said there had been a large gathering in front of the home before the attack."I have a pit bull myself," Stuckley said. "But it's for safety. It's not for children. That child didn't even have a chance. The whole thing makes me sick to my stomach."__________________

Hello all, I found a decent book on the history of the Akita, " Dog Man: An Uncommon Life on a Faraway Mountain," by Martha Sherrill. It's the history of the breed in modern times and how a single man in Japan, Morie Sawataishi brought the breed back from the brink of extinction at the end of WWII. I was unaware the breed had dwindled to about a dozen or so dogs! I have not yet finished the book but I've found its a easy read if not a bit mystical. You can find it on Amazon.

GREELEY, Colorado - A dog stood guard over her owner's body for up to six weeks after the man committed suicide on the remote northeastern Colorado plains, authorities said.

The body of 25-year-old Jake Baysinger was found Sunday on the Pawnee National Grasslands about 75 miles northeast of Denver. Cash, his German shepherd, was found beside him, thin and dehydrated but still alive. The dog had apparently survived by eating mice and rabbits, authorities said.

The Weld County coroner ruled Baysinger's death a suicide. The cause of death wasn't immediately determined but authorities found a gun nearby, the coroner's office said Tuesday. Baysinger was reported missing June 28. An extensive search failed to locate him, but a rancher saw Cash last weekend, went to investigate and discovered Baysinger's body and his pickup.

"At least we know it's over now," said Baysinger's wife, Sara. "We'd been looking for my husband for six weeks, and this isn't how we wanted it to end. At least we can close this."

Cash has been reunited with her and her 2-year-old son, Lane. She said her little boy is "very close to that dog" and happy to see her again.

Investigators said the dog probably kept coyotes away from the body.__________________

HOUSTON — The two undercover agents were miles from any town, deep in the East Texas countryside, following a car carrying three dogfighting fanatics and a female pit bull known for ripping off the genitals of other dogs. A car trailed the officers with two burly armed guards, hired to protect the dog and a $40,000 wager.

When the owners of the opposing dog, a crew from Louisiana, got cold feet and took off, the men in the undercover agents’ party reacted with fury, offering to chase them down and kill them. The owner of the female pit bull, an American living in Mexico, was merciful. He decided to take the opposing dog and let the men live, the officers said.

Over 17 months, the agents from the Texas state police penetrated a murky and dangerous subculture in East Texas, a world where petty criminals, drug dealers and a few people with ordinary jobs shared a passion for watching pit bulls tear each other apart in a 12-foot-square pit.

Investigators found that dogfighting was on the rise in Texas and was much more widespread than they had expected. The ring broken up here had links to dogfighting organizations in other states and in Mexico, suggesting an extensive underground network of people devoted to the activity, investigators said.

Besides a cadre of older, well-established dogfighters, officials said, the sport has begun to attract a growing following among young people from hardscrabble neighborhoods in Texas, where gangs, drug dealing and hip-hop culture make up the backdrop.

The investigation here led to the indictments of 55 people and the seizing of 187 pit bulls, breaking up what officials described as one of the largest dogfighting rings in the country.

“It’s like the Saturday night poker game for hardened criminals,” said one of the undercover agents, Sgt. C. T. Manning, describing the tense atmosphere at the fights.

In between screaming obscenities at the animals locked in combat, Sergeant Manning said, the participants smoked marijuana, popped pills, made side deals about things like selling cocaine and fencing stolen property, and, always, talked about dogs.

Dogfighting drew national attention in 2007 when Michael Vick, the quarterback for the Atlanta Falcons, was convicted of felony conspiracy after holding dogfights on his property in Smithfield, Va. On Monday, officials in Los Angeles announced the breakup of a dogfighting ring. It was the outcry among animal-welfare groups after Mr. Vick’s arrest that prompted the Texas Legislature to make dogfighting a felony in September 2007. Before that, the police in Texas had largely ignored the phenomenon because the offense was a misdemeanor.

In the Texas case, law enforcement officials described a secretive society of men who set up prize fights between their pit bulls and bet large sums on the outcome. Many of those indicted had long criminal records, but they also include a high school English teacher, a land purchaser for an oil company and a manager at a Jack in the Box restaurant.

The participants generally arranged the fight over the phone, matching dogs by weight and sex, and agreeing to a training period of six or eight weeks.

The training techniques were brutal. One man who was indicted trained a dog by forcing it to run for up to an hour at a time through a cemetery with a chain around its neck that weighed as much as it did. Then he forced dogs to swim for long periods before running on a treadmill. Every day the dogs would be given dog protein powders, vitamins and high-grade food to build muscle.

Then, as the fight date approached, the trainers would starve the dog, give it very little water and pump it full of an anti-inflammatory drug.

The fights were held in out-of-the-way places — an abandoned motel in the refinery town of Texas City, a horse corral in a slum on the Houston outskirts, behind a barn on a farm near Jasper and at a farmhouse in Matagorda County, south of Houston.

The two undercover agents, Sergeant Manning and his partner, S. A. Davis, posed as members of a motorcycle gang who stole automated teller machines for a living. They infiltrated the ring, allied themselves with a group of people who owned fighting dogs and rented a warehouse in Houston, where fights were eventually held.

People came to the contests from as far away as Tennessee, Michigan and the Czech Republic. Every weekend, fights were held throughout the area for purses that usually ran about $10,000. The agents documented at least 50 fights.

“The undercover cops were sometimes invited to three different dogfights in a night,” said Belinda Smith, the Harris County assistant district attorney prosecuting the cases, along with Stephen St. Martin.

The ring members called the fights “dog shows.” The two dogs would be suspended from a scale with a thin cord tied around their neck and torso. If one of the dogs did not make weight, the owner would forfeit his half of the prize money, or the odds would be adjusted. After the weigh-in, the owners washed each others’ dogs in water, baking soda, warm milk and vinegar to make sure their coats were not poisoned.

Then dogs were forced to face off in a portable plywood box two feet tall, usually with a beige carpet on the floor, to show the blood, officials said. At the command of “face your dogs,” the animals were turned toward each other. When the handlers released them, the dogs would collide with a thud in the center of the ring, tearing at each other’s mouths, jaws, necks, withers and genitals, officials said. A referee usually would let the dogs fight until one backed off, then the handlers would take them back to their corners and wash them for 30 seconds.

During the fight, the exhausted animals would sometimes overheat, lock onto each other and lie in the ring. The handlers would blow on them to cool them off and force them to fight.

The fight usually ended when a dog refused to cross a line in the center of the ring to confront the opponent, known as “standing the line.” Such dogs were usually drowned or bludgeoned to death the next day, officials said.

“These guys take it very personally,” Sergeant Manning said. “It’s a reflection on them.”

Most of the dogs seized were kept outside in muddy yards, chained to axles sunk in the ground, with only six feet of tether and no shelter, beyond, in some cases, a toppled plastic 40-gallon barrel. All suffered from multiple parasites, veterinarians said.

“These dogs were kept in more than cruel conditions — they were subjected to torturous conditions,” said Dr. Timothy Harkness, of the Houston Humane Society. “Death was more pleasant than what they had to exist for.”

Many of the surviving animals had battle wounds on their necks and mouths, Dr. Harkness said. Although some were not aggressive toward people, they were all bred to attack other dogs, and officials made the decision to euthanize them last week.

Dr. Dawn Blackmar, director of veterinary public health for Harris County, said that putting down more than 80 dogs in her care was heart-wrenching. “It was absolutely awful,” Dr. Blackmar said. “It’s not the dogs’ fault. It’s that people have taken and exploited this breed.”

The members of the dogfighting ring were careful about who attended a fight, often limiting each side to 10 guests and quizzing people about who they were, who they knew.

The principals would keep the location of the fight secret until the last minute and then go in a caravan of cars to the rendezvous point, making it difficult to collect evidence, law enforcement officials said. They were also secretive about where they kept their dogs, for fear of robbery.

“People would go to the fights and talk about their yards,” said Ms. Smith, the assistant district attorney. “But they were very secretive about where their yards are.”

Ms. Smith said dozens of people who attended fights had yet to be identified, despite photos, because they piled into cars that did not belong to them to go to the events and never used their real names.

“There are a lot of people doing this,” she said. “We could have gone on and on and on with this investigation.”

Man's First FriendWhat was the original domesticated animal?By Christopher BeamUpdated Friday, March 6, 2009, at 6:27 PM ET --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In a study released Friday, a team of archaeologists presented new evidence that horses were domesticated in 3500 B.C.—about a thousand years earlier than previous estimates. What was the first domesticated animal?

The dog. No one can pinpoint exactly when humans first started keeping dogs as pets, but estimates range from roughly 13,000 to 30,000 years ago. Archaeologists can tell domesticated canines apart from wolves through skeletal differences: Dogs had smaller teeth, for example, and a reduced "Sagittal crest"—the bone ridge that runs down the forehead and connects to the jaw. The earliest dog bones, discovered in Belgium in 2008, are from 31,700 years ago. But ancient dog skeletons have also been unearthed in western Russia, near its border with Ukraine, and elsewhere across Europe, Asia, and Australia, suggesting that canine domestication was a widespread phenomenon.

Scientists have also used DNA evidence to estimate the origin of domesticated dogs. The so-called "molecular clock" theory posits that if you know the speed at which DNA mutates, you can develop a chronology for doggie evolution. Say you know when wolves and coyotes separated and became different species, and you know what their genomes currently look like. You can then determine how long it took for those genetic changes to occur. Based on this methodology, dogs as a species are estimated to be 15,000 to 20,000 years old. But critics argue that gene substitution is not a constant process—it speeds up, then slows down—making the estimates rough at best.

How did dogs get domesticated in the first place? The first ones were basically just tame wolves. Some researchers believe wolves were first attracted by the garbage produced by early human settlements. Those canines brave enough to approach humans, yet not so aggressive as to attack, got fed. Eventually, they no longer needed the strong jaws and sharp teeth of their feral counterparts. Their noses got smaller, too. (Dogs characteristics can change a lot in only a few generations.) After this initial process of "self-domestication," humans started breeding dogs to help with hunting, herding, standing guard, and carrying stuff. Humans also deliberately bred dogs to be more adorable.

Other pets came later. Sheep and goats were first domesticated roughly 11,000 years ago, while cats became pets around 7000 B.C. with the advent of agriculture. (As people collected and stored grain, it would attract mice, which would then attract cats.) Around the same time, people started keeping cattle for consumption purposes. Several thousand years later, around 4000 B.C., as trade routes developed, humans began using oxen, donkeys, and camels to transport goods. Horses were eventually domesticated for both riding and carrying goods, but scholars differ on which purpose came first.